


Of Justice and Ghosts

by toyhto



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst, But really hints of future romance, F/M, One Shot, Or just half-siblings talking, Pre-Relationship, R plus L equals J, This is TV-show compliant, but they don't know it yet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-22
Updated: 2016-08-22
Packaged: 2018-08-10 11:05:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7842433
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toyhto/pseuds/toyhto
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>He knows his sister is watching him carefully like they are the only two humans left in the world, as they in a way are, and that makes his every remaining piece crumble.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Justice and Ghosts

Only a ghost. That’s what he’s become.

He stands on the wall of Winterfell, looking through the landscape that’s fallen into snow and ice. His shoulders are heavy and his heart is blank, and their shouts are still ringing in his ears, _King in the North, King in the North_. But he’s no king, he’s barely a human. He’s a man who died and never was meant to be brought back, because no one is, no one deserves that.

There are pieces that remain lost. He can feel it in his bones, he can feel it with his every breath. He went away and came back, but something went missing in the darkness.

In the battle he felt whole, kind of. With a steel in his hand he felt whole, with mud and blood on his face he felt whole. But now that the night is quiet and the ruins of his childhood home are holding breath with everyone inside, now that there’s no one left to fight with, he has to stop and breathe and feel the pieces he lost.

He thought it was justice. Perhaps it was, but still he had to pay for it with knives in his chest. The thought makes his skin ache once more and he rises his hand to rub on the wounds that are slowly changing into scars.

And he thought it was justice that they took Winterfell back, and perhaps it was. Surely it had to be justice how Ramsay’s own dogs teared the man apart. Surely there had to be justice in the tiniest smile that rose onto Sansa’s lips when he told her about what was left of Ramsay.

He wishes he had been there to witness. He wishes he had heard the man screaming. Revenge and justice, he sees now, are strangely close to each other.

They call him a king, and he’s more tired than ever, more broken than ever. He presses his eyes closed, just for a second, and takes a deep breath. There are steps, and he knows them, soft steps in the snow that keeps coming, gentle steps that stop beside him.

“So,” Sansa says, and Jon opens his eyes reluctantly.

“So,” he says.

“King in the North.” Sansa looks at him and he looks straight ahead, through the air full of snow. He knows the look on Sansa’s face, he knows his sister is watching him carefully like they are the only two humans left in the world, as they in a way are, and that makes his every remaining piece crumble.

“I didn’t ask for that,” he says, his voice shattering only a little.

“No,” Sansa exhales, “you didn’t. We never seem to get the things that we ask for.”

“I only wanted our home back, for you,” he hears himself saying, even though the words feel clumsy in his mouth, “and for me.”

“I know, Jon,” Sansa says, and her voice is so gentle it seems madness that she’s talking to him of all people, to him who’s only a bastard and a broken thing and a ghost of a man. He’s told her they need to trust each other, and still he finds he can’t. He doesn’t know what to do with this beautiful alien creature who once was his half-sister, in the past that now seems like a life-time away. He could protect her, that’s the only thing he probably can do, he could hold his sword and kill anyone who comes to hurt her. But she has looked him into eyes and told him there’s no way anyone can protect anyone, and he believes her, he knows she’s as broken as he is and that there’s nothing that can heal a wound like that.

“Tell me what to do,” he says then, as the night is falling, as she stands beside him so close that he can feel her warmth. “I don’t know what to do, Sansa, tell me.”

When he slowly turns to face her, her eyes are already on his face. She’s searching his eyes, the scars on his face, his jaw and his lips that are pressed tight shut, and he wants to look away and finds out he can’t.

“I can’t do that,” she says with a soft voice. He never hears her voice that soft around other people nor does he see her eyes so gentle when someone else is looking. It’s like she’s and he’s the only person she lets see herself without it, only for a moment but still it makes his chest ache with fear and something else he can’t quite name. “But I’ll stand beside you, Jon, I will. And you’ll stand beside me.”

“Aye,” he says. He’s cold. He’s been cold since he came back from the numb blankness of death, and perhaps a long time before that. Sansa moves just an inch closer to him, the only warm thing left in the world. He doesn’t know what he should promise her, he doesn’t know what he can, he doesn’t know what it means that she’s saying, beside what they’re doing right now, standing on the wall of Winterfell so close to each other that their shoulders are almost touching.

“We’re what’s left, Jon,” Sansa tells him, and he lets his eyes wander on her hair, red as fire, and her mouth that keeps finding words whenever he’s lacking them. “I know I’m a wreck, I know they broke me and whatever came of me is perhaps stronger but there’s less kindness, less dreams, less hope in me. But I’m all you have left. And you’re all I have left. Let them call you king if they must. I don’t care. This is what’s left of my home and I won’t leave this place until I’m cold and dead. And you’re all I’ve left of my family and I won’t let them tear us apart, no matter what they call you.”

“Sansa,” he says, his voice dark and low and crumbling. It’s not the voice of the man he wanted to be. “I tried to make right choices and I failed and died, and then they brought me back but not all of me. Something got lost. There must be a reason why the dead remain dead, because I feel little more than a ghost.”

Sansa eyes him carefully, and for a second he desperately wants to touch her, to kiss her forehead and feel the warmth within and perhaps imagine he’s still the man he was.

“I’ll have you anyway,” she says.

**Author's Note:**

> So, I wrote this in the train, and it's probably good that it's both short and not smutty at all, because it's a weird feeling to be writing something not suitable for children when you're sitting in the train surrounded by people. Who else does that anyway?
> 
> And yes, my shipping heart really beats for Jon and Sansa atm (and also I might have a huge crush on Jon, and by huge I mean _huge_ , when I'm writing I mainly just imagine Jon's frowning face and that makes me so happy).


End file.
